In the Darkness We Find Redemption
by SaintPandemonium
Summary: Ancient Judea. 27 AD. The story of Qetsiyah and Silas and the macabre events that twisted them together on a bed of betrayal and led to the creation of the Immortality Spell. Why would Silas need such a spell? Why would Qetsiyah, a child of the noble Asmata Witches Clan, agree to help him? Did love drive her, or lust disguised in its beauty? And whose bones are in her talisman?


Sunlight kissed the rocky mouth encircling the Dead Sea with a thick and consuming heat. Jumbling stones made tiny pathways around it in the eerie likeness of a Roman amphitheater. The salt beds filled the mind of the young woman with images of her beloved aunts standing on the water's surface, torches lit in the night, raising an offering of thanks to Asherah for her birth.

Here in this place, Qetsiyah of Judea shed the _stola_ draping around her, stepped out of the mass of linen and onwards to the glittering liquid. _"Khelaa,"_she said in a voice softer than a whisper, _"ephphatha…"_

Slowly, the water began to bubble, making Qetsiyah think of Asherah herself pouring the Dead Sea into a pot over the hearth. Shutting her eyes she reached into the water's swathes of salt as though reaching for a friend, and let their essence run through her veins with the energy of ten thousand children._"Elah, elah, elah. O'arad kayarta—"_

"Nusquam loquuntur lingua materna," rolled out a precise, male voice over the stones and into Qetsiyah's ears. "Non est sapiens,_ mea speciosa mea."_

The energy of the salt and sun shattered. Her eyes opened. _That_ voice. The way it caressed every vowel and made otherwise punctilious women do foolish things belonged to no one else _but_ Sylvanus Hortensius Fortunatus. Qetsiyah's tiny shock of annoyance became that wide, wicked grin most of the women in her family were known for and were assured that two thousand years from now her descendants would have the same grin. In fact, aunt Sabah had foreseen it one day while gazing into her incantation bowl.

"Silas." Qetsiyah dared not stand to show him the fullness of her bareness._"Silas, quomodo audes!"_

His laugh was rough. "Quomodo miser quid sum? Ha! Tu nuda sunt, non me." He watched the browned woman push herself away from the bank and edge to the clothes she left behind. His sex tightened at the sight of the soft bush covering Qetsiyah's vulva. "Numquid aliquem viderint te—?"

"_Nequando!" _Qetsiyah raised the stola with an arm-wave and swiftly robed herself. "Ego alligent, non ego stultus…"

Silas sneered at her playfully. "Age, age." He outstretched his right arm. "Nimiumque sole…tu sunt tam atra."

Qetsiyah rolled her eyes deep in the sockets. "Sileo."

"Imo, mater."

Aunt Aphrah and aunt Tavitha would have hexed him for a fortnight if she knew he'd been quietly telling Qetsiyah to mime the beauty of other high-blooded women of Judea who thought themselves to be pale, Roman ladies by merely having Pontius Pilate as Prefect. Qetsiyah was born beneath the cassia tree for which she was named. No child of the Asmata Witches' clan would bow to a god of Man, whether he be Caesar, or the one they called _Eesho Msheekhaa_. Jesus the Messiah. Asherah was the only Messiah. The deliciousness of the religious treason of the Asmata was known only to them. Other witches of Judea could be faithful Jews, but not the Asmata. They lived on the winds of the spirited past most believed had perished, bowing before naked effigies of clay and wood and stone. Of the Great Mother who fed her sons and daughters the ripe bounty of the harvest in exchange for their fealty to magic itself.

Of course Silas knew how the Asmata Witches felt. How could he not? He'd sensed the trails of their magic during that summer eve when Qetsiyah was stripped of the demon that'd taken residence in her body. He witnessed Qetsiyah writhing and raging in the circle as the eldest aunt, Saadiah, made an oath against Caesar and proclaimed that the tyranny of the Romans had made the Spirits angry and upset the balance that always protected witches from such evil on that land. How could Saadiah be wrong? The Asmata Witches had reigned as spiritual queens of that region for over three thousand years before their power began to crack into pieces and they were left as a remnant of what they once were.

Too much Darkness, Silas felt. And ever since, Qetsiyah had been afraid of the darkness.


End file.
